This invention relates to fuse holders and, in particular, to fuse holders for use in telephone central offices.
Telephone central offices employ fuses in various load circuits for load protection. Many of these fuses are high ampere, i.e., 600 ampere fuses, which were necessary to accommodate the high ampere circuits in the original central office equipment. Also, because of their high ampere rating, these fuses are physically large and of considerable length as measured between the knife-blade ends of the fuses.
To connect the 600 ampere fuses in the various central office load circuits, the central office equipment includes for each fuse, a pair of knife-blade receiving fuse clips. These fuse clips are fixed to the equipment at a predetermined spacing dictated by the fuse length which, as mentioned above, is considerable.
Over the years much of the original central office equipment has been replaced by lower ampere equipment. As a result, it has been found that, in many cases, the 600 ampere fuses are no longer necessary for the new equipment. Also, the presence of the 600 ampere fuses tends to mask current conditions in the lower ampere equipment which should be responded to.
Accordingly, it has been proposed to replace the 600 ampere fuses with lower ampere fuses. Unfortunately, the lower ampere fuses are of much shorter length than the 600 ampere fuses and, hence, are not compatible with the spacing between the existing knife blade receiving fuse clips. To replace the existing 600 ampere fuses with the lower ampere fuses would, therefore, require repositioning and possibly replacing the existing knife-blade receiving fuse clips which is a time consuming and costly process.
It is, therefore, an object of the present invention to provide a fuse holder adapter which permits lower ampere fuses to be used with existing knife-blade receiving fuse clips used for 600 ampere fuses in telephone central office equipment.
It is a further object of the present invention to provide a fuse adapter as set forth in the first objective and which can accommodate a wide range of lower ampere fuses.
It is yet a further object of the present invention to provide a fuse holder adapter as set forth in the above objectives and which is inexpensive and easy to fabricate.